There is a really good book out called "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo which takes place in Mumbai. The book's author spends years frequenting a slum by the international airport. Without interfering in anyone's lives she is able to develop an intimate feeling for each occupant and writes about them with the intensity of a fictionalized novel.
This morning i was sitting at an apartment , very early in the morning in a big city trying to figure out what birds were calling to each other. They had awakened me at the crack of dawn and i wanted to know who they were. Binoculars in hand i scanned the available trees(three), power lines, and chimney tops. Birds flew in and out of my field of view and i ticked off the ones i knew and looked up the ones i didn't. i drank my tea, watched squirrels, listened for birds and waited for the rest of the house to wake up.
After observing for about 15 minutes i saw an Asian man approach a pile of garbage that had been stacked out on the street for the morning pickup. He was clean, thin, medium height, closely cropped hair, wearing brown trousers and a brown shirt, he looked like he could be anyone from the neighborhood putting out their garbage and was pushing a cart filled with stuff that looked like he was getting rid of.
i watched out of curiosity as he took a large full plastic bag off the cart and walked over to the pile. Instead of throwing it on the pile he placed it on the sidewalk away from the pile and walked across the street to a set of blue garbage cans that were lined up. He opened the lid of the first one and took out a small plastic bag that was maybe 1/3 full. He kept doing this emptying the bags and putting them aside. He emptied the contents back into the bin then kept picking through the can.
I thought he had hit a gold mine. Aluminum cans that had been placed back in their cardboard containers came out in threes, fours and fives. He unloaded the cans into the plastic bags he had emptied and kept picking. Bottles came out too so he walked back across the street and got his cart to move it closer to the bins. He methodically laid the bottles on their sides in the main part of the cart and stuffed the extra plastic bags into a box he had hanging off the side.
He went through every trash can on the street, kicked bags lying on the ground to see if they needed going through and methodically worked his way up the block. He had a spritzer bottle filled with something liquid and a towel that he cleaned his hands with. If i hadn't watched him picking through the garbage i would have thought he was a resident.
Trash picking, politics, caste systems, death and life all are brought to the surface in Boo's amazing piece of work. Reading a book like that about India divorces you from the reality that some of these same types of occupational endeavors are going on daily in our own country. We tend to close our eyes to the realities that many homeless endure on a daily basis and believe ourselves to be better than those countries we read about or visit.
i haven't been in the states 24 hours yet and already i'm seeing the dark side of our nation in an affluent community.
See ya next week.
4 comments:
Is his activity evidence of his destitution or of his initiative? His need to hide the shame of soiled hands? Publicly self spritzing...Why no facilities, with attendants, like a true resident. That presentable appearance could be just the ruse he needs to be allowed in line with others when he spends that embarrassingly acquired money... The cash could provide the clue the others use to keep their distance...If someone will politely alert the authorities and break his cycle of acquisition we will all be better. Lead him to the cheese. Oh, no! There might not be authorities to alert if....unthinkable! Can we count on volunteer authorities? His exploitation of the communities systematic pattern of waste disposal...for personal gain...without paying a fee! Break-up the pickup days; so he can't predict the availability. He is using societies patterns thus getting a shot at the good stuff first....I don't get it... Where is his own display of contempt for having to do this? Unstrewn refuse in his wake! What is that? Where are his handlers? A name tag, a hat? And after the sun came up? If only he had binoculars.
Upon further research I've found that this is his turf and that others have established theirs around the neighborhood and protect them from anyone bold enough to try and rummage in the same garbage cans.
Protect? Is he an independent thug?
Funny you said that i wondered if anyone would get hurt if they tried to move in on him.
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